Bad Day at the Lake

I wanted a last fling.  I loaded my raft and headed to the lake.  Right after Labor Day, they lower the reservoir levels so rapidly its useless to go.

I tried to get going early enough to possibly get a place to park, at the boat ramp.

But alas, so many chores I have to complete before I do anything else.

I was up there by 1:30 however.   No parking places at the boat ramp.

It's not like there ever are very many parking places there, that are not for cars and trucks with boat trailers.  There are only five car places.  The county doesn't cater to non motor boat folks, with kayaks or rafts, like me.  So if you want a parking place, near the water, to launch a raft or kayak, you have to be up there early, or go on a day without much use, like if the weather isn't quite right.

This summer the crowds there have been something awful, so getting a non boat trailer parking place has been very very difficult.   I've only gone three times the entire summer where I've stayed, after finding a place to park.  This time was one of those, but I didn't find a place to park, and eventually instead of leaving, went to the big picnic with swimming area park where you have to pay $7 just to park.

The parking places are nowhere near the water.  You're not supposed to launch a raft or have one in the swimming area.  Not to say there were not a zillion people with rafts, kayaks and paddle boards inside the swimming area.  But I follow rules.  You park a long way from the water.  Very long way.

I blew up the raft by the car knowing it would be hard to get it to the water.  I was maybe a quarter mile from the lake and there were no good places to get it in the water once blown up.  I really wanted to be on the lake though.  I finally pulled it on the little wheel cart all the way to the water.  I had put the two wheel cart in the back of the raft then, rather than leave the raft and walk it all the way back up across the field, to the car. 

Almost immediately once out on the water, free of the over crowded swimming picnic area, I discovered the raft had a terrible leak in one side.  It was going flat fast.  I got out of the raft and swam, pulling it, looking for a beach I could pull it out on.  I found one, although it was slammed constantly from wake waves from motor boats.  Almost immediately there, a group of people emerged from the trail down from the road.  They had fishing poles.   They surrounded me and the raft, ignoring what I was trying to tell them, that I needed to get the raft out and search out a leak.  I don't even know if they spoke English and understood, but common sense and courtesy you would think would tell them "this beach is occupied".  People are self serving nowadays though.  They don't care.  Especially if its a person alone.

I found another tiny little beach, started to eat my lunch, which was merely a bag of peanuts, before pulling the raft out.  This time it was three Hispanic men who horned in, coming down a trail through the berry vines, and refused to leave.  They too had fishing poles and intimidated me badly, mocking me.  Once again I left, this time angry that people are so awful.  I'd repeated to them this tiny little spot was occupied, which only made them move closer in scary fashion, so I left, pulling my raft out to where I could swim and get away.

I headed back, exhausted and upset, to the bouyed off swimming picnic area, realizing my mistake for even coming out today, then with the raft springing a leak I'd never find to repair until I got home and away from people.  I tried to drag the raft on the little two wheel cart that I strap to the back, through the gravel of the "beach" area (pea gravel), and the cart wheel twisted off.  Now what, I thought.  I felt defeated.  I was exhausted.

Suddenly a young man shows up, lifting the back of the raft up, wants to help.  He's a teenager.  His father comes also behind him.  He speaks no English but the boy does.  They get the raft up the 20 feet or so through the pea gravel to the grass lawn.  I still have a long way to pull it to the car and I head off.  About half way through it, I take a break and lay down.  The  boy and his father show up, thinking something's wrong.  I am happy to take them up on an offer to pull the raft all the way up to the parking lot where my car is.  I was not going to turn down help at that point.

I don't think I could have repaired the leak even if I'd found it.  It was one side. The other side held fine.  I swam under the raft looking for bubbles but found none.  The raft is ten years old now. I think it was leaking at the valve.  I have a temp repair kit I carry with me that is entirely adequate for regular leaks but wouldn't work on a leaking valve.  The one side leaking was about half deflated by the time I got back to the picnic area above which I was parked.

I might get rid of the raft.  I love it and love being out on the water, but the difficulty of even finding a place to park this summer has me convinced it won't get better around here.  We are experiencing a population explosion of people in the valley and the result is...well, just like the bad day at the lake, no place to park, recreational places over run with people.  When there are a zillion people on the lake and only five parking spaces for cars without boat trailers near the boat ramp, seriously, do I think things will improve?   I don't.

That was not the end of the bad day.   I'd been contacted by a woman in sw Albany via facebook, over cats, kittens in need, after a woman who fed them had moved.  I was told she moved after a neighbor allegedly repeatedly called police over her feeding them.  She became very stressed and moved, is what I was told.

I had gone over, as usual, to canvass nearby neighbors, check it out.  The woman who contacted me had had four kittens left on her porch in a carrier or box.  She didn't know who did that, likely one of the neighbors who doesn't like cats, and now is fostering them through KATA.  She believes they were offspring of one of the stray females.

Most people didn't even answer the door.   One farther down did, to a friend who lived nearby, although she has moved to the east coast now and just returns to work on her house to ready it for sale.  But they were drunk so got no useful info there.  The abandoned house where the cats hang out has been long abandoned and the feeder house, across the street, is now vacant too, since she moved out, although the property has been sold.  The house next to the abandoned house had sounds inside and lots of cars out front but they didn't answer.   I stuck a card in their door and left but later they came out to leave and I talked to her.  She seemed nice, was happy the strays would be helped, said she had two unfixed cats of her own, one a calico who had just had kittens a week ago, somewhere out back she said.   This I didn't think was normal.  She claimed she would get the two fixed, when I offered.

After the bad day at the lake, I went over to trap, since my barn cat placement friend has openings and I'd seen one skinny mom with one kitten over there, plus a male following her, and one other cat, a black tux, that I knew by talking to folks were not owned.    I set traps at the abandoned house just a few feet off the sidewalk and also tried to knock on the neighbors door again, to let her know I was trapping and to ask her to take in her cats.  Again, TV's on, no answer at door.

I had just returned to my car, and two cats, a mom and a kitten, were over by the traps, when out came the woman next door.  This time full on psychopath, yelling at me, accusing me of trespassing on private property, the same property on which she now stood, screaming her cats would get in the traps.  I tried to be nice, suggesting she keep them in a couple hours, so they wouldn't go in the traps, said we all want this done, lets just do it, really fast, there aren't that many and they're starving.  Then she claimed I was going to sit outside her house in the dark and how creepy that would be. Said "don't you think that's weird, don't you think you have a problem?"  I tried at first so hard to remain calm and nice.   At first. 

 First of all, I said, I'm not sitting outside your house at all, but rather down in front of the abandoned house, in my car, parked on the curb, nice and legal, and that I'm not some monster, that I'm helping out little starving kittens.  Then she said she was calling the police, it went down hill from there, so I just grabbed the traps and left.   I was too tired to take more crap.  Shaking and sobbing later, to think how easy this problem would be to solve if people were not so fricking crazy, cold and unkind.  I can't figure out the change from one day to the next with her, but I have a very bad feeling this is a person I encountered before with similar results.

Today I'm kicking back and trying to rest.  I'm worse for the wear, in trying to haul my raft way too far from a parking lot to water, then the long swim towing it when I realized it was deflating.  I so badly wanted some recreation.